La mappa murale monumentale nel Palazzo GIL di Trastevere. La propaganda cartografica dell’impero nel fascismo

This article examines the monumental wall map located in the former Palazzo della Gioventù Italiana del Littorio (GIL) in Trastevere, Rome – today known as WeGIL – as an example of cartographic propaganda under Italian Fascism. Created within the architectural and ideological framework designed by Luigi W. Moretti in 1933 and inaugurated in 1937, the map visually celebrates the Fascist colonial enterprise and the proclamation of the Italian Empire following the conquest of Ethiopia. Through a critical cartographic lens, the article interprets the mural map as a symbolic and educational tool aimed at the political and cultural formation of Fascist youth. The work situates this artifact within the broader tradition of monumental cartography – from Renaissance decorative cycles to twentieth-century political maps – revealing how the regime used spatial imagery to legitimize imperial ambitions and shape collective identity. The wall map’s visual austerity and emphatic inscriptions – such as «Noi tireremo dritto» – translate the rhetoric of power, resistance, and destiny into spatial form, aligning geographic representation with Fascist ideology. Ultimately, the map stands as both a pedagogical instrument and a propagandistic emblem of imperial modernity, embodying the synthesis of architecture, geography, and political myth that characterized the visual culture of the regime.